At its regular monetary policy meeting on Thursday 3 September, the ECB Governing Council decided to keep the interest rate on the main refinancing operations as well as the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility unchanged at 0.05%, 0.30% and -0.20% respectively, as expected (Figure 1). Additionally, the Central Bank increased the issue share limit it can purchase under QE from 25% to 33%, and revised downwards both growth and inflation projections for 2015-17. In more detail, real GDP growth was marked down by 0.1pps in 2015 (to 1.4%) and by 0.2pps both in 2016 and 2017 (to 1.7% and 1.8%, respectively). In the same context, the average inflation forecast was lowered by 0.2pps in 2015 to 0.1%, by 0.4pps to 1.1% in 2016 and by 0.1pps to 1.7% in 2017. The said revisions mainly reflected a weaker external environment in light of emerging market woes and, particularly, China-related jitters.